We were wrong

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On Wednesday morning Kickstarter was sent a blog post quoting disturbing material found on Reddit. The offensive material was part of a draft for a “seduction guide” that someone was using Kickstarter to publish. The posts offended a lot of people — us included — and many asked us to cancel the creator’s project. We didn’t.

We were wrong.

Why didn’t we cancel the project when this material was brought to our attention? Two things influenced our decision:

The decision had to be made immediately. We had only two hours from when we found out about the material to when the project was ending. We’ve never acted to remove a project that quickly.

Our processes, and everyday thinking, bias heavily toward creators. This is deeply ingrained. We feel a duty to our community — and our creators especially — to approach these investigations methodically as there is no margin for error in canceling a project. This thinking made us miss the forest for the trees.

These factors don’t excuse our decision but we hope they add clarity to how we arrived at it.

Let us be 100% clear: Content promoting or glorifying violence against women or anyone else has always been prohibited from Kickstarter. If a project page contains hateful or abusive material we don’t approve it in the first place. If we had seen this material when the project was submitted to Kickstarter (we didn’t), it never would have been approved. Kickstarter is committed to a culture of respect.

Where does this leave us?

First, there is no taking back money from the project or canceling funding after the fact. When the project was funded the backers’ money went directly from them to the creator. We missed the window.

Second, the project page has been removed from Kickstarter. The project has no place on our site. For transparency’s sake, a record of the page is cached here.

Third, we are prohibiting “seduction guides,” or anything similar, effective immediately. This material encourages misogynistic behavior and is inconsistent with our mission of funding creative works. These things do not belong on Kickstarter.

Fourth, today Kickstarter will donate $25,000 to an anti-sexual violence organization called RAINN. It’s an excellent organization that combats exactly the sort of problems our inaction may have encouraged.

We take our role as Kickstarter’s stewards very seriously. Kickstarter is one of the friendliest, most supportive places on the web and we’re committed to keeping it that way. We’re sorry for getting this so wrong.

Thank you for your efforts, transparency and communication on this issue. I am glad to see that you are practicing intellectual integrity in recognizing that you made mistakes, but using this opportunity to improve policy and practice.

"On Wednesday morning Kickstarter was sent a blog post quoting disturbing material found on Reddit. The offensive material was part of a draft for a “seduction guide” that someone was using Kickstarter to publish. The posts offended a lot of people — us included — and many asked us to cancel the creator’s project. We didn’t."

"Let us be 100% clear: Content promoting or glorifying violence against women or anyone else has always been prohibited from Kickstarter.... Kickstarter is committed to a culture of respect."

@Robyn, I can point out that money is often taken instantly from backers and sent to the amazon account. Some of the transactions take more time. I am friends with a creator and will be doing my own soon, and he made a point of mentioning to me that most of the money is transferred in minutes or hours, with those accounts that have a problem taking longer.

1. I think they found out about the Kobe beef scam a while before it was set to fund. They found out about this guy two hours before it funded. Don't quote me on that, though; there might be an inconsistency there.

2. It's not Kickstarter cutting the check -- it's Amazon Payments, and your credit card is charged right when the campaign funds. I think it genuinely is out of Kickstarter's hands after that point.

Nice try... I don't doubt your sincerity but the apology falls short. Apologizing after the crap has hit the fan is like putting the cart before the horse, just trying to excuse why you shouldn't be in trouble. You had the time to cancel the project even after it had funded, you could have pulled the plug on it for violating you guidelines. Plus I am sure the offending material just didn't show up just before funding so someone should have caught it earlier or do you not monitor the projects after they go live? Thank you for your apology but in my view you have lost a lot of credibility.

That apology is a nice start, but I call horsepucky on 'We only had two hours...'

"If we had seen this material when the project was submitted to Kickstarter (we didn’t), it never would have been approved. Kickstarter is committed to a culture of respect."

That sounds ... really wrong.

You approve every single KickStarter before it goes live, and you've rejected many (for understandable reasons). Frankly, this tells me that whomever approved this particular KickStarter made a bone-headed mistake. This is something that should have been flagged for a high level review, and if it wasn't, whomever said 'Yeah, that's okay,' need to have a talking to about why this was not okay. I'm not saying fire them, but your entire approvals team needs to all sit down and discuss why this happened, why it's not okay, and how to not have it happen again.

Put some checks and balances in BEFORE it gets approved.

Unless you're trying to say "We don't review the content before we approve a kickstarter" because if so? You need to start. Now.

It's a relief to see you guys have done the right thing -- and I appreciate the transparency about the situation. I do have skepticism though regarding not being able to stop the funding. This seems like a situation where KS should and probably could go above & beyond to make sure funding for this project does not happen.

I appreciate Kickstarter's transparency and sincerity on the matter - it can't be easy as a business to stand up for what's right and wrong (on the internet of all places), and I applaud them massively for taking a stand and apologizing. I have no problem with the fact that it's after the funding of the "seduction manual" (really?), it's the fact that they said anything at all that counts.

Thank you very much, Kickstarter. A wonderful apology and meaningful action taken. Too many "sorry you were offended" apologies fly around these days, and you owned it. This will definitely make me eager to fund more projects!

Superbacker

Just hearing about this, I'm happy to see you folks at Kickstarter are genuine about the whole ordeal. It's sad when those grey area projects slip through the cracks of the rules of a site, so it's wonderful to hear that your site won't stand for this, and that it's amending the rules to make sure it doesn't happen again. Huzzah! Much love.

Sorry gang, but this is simply a "Let's make everyone happy" deal and while we'd all like the convenience of Kickstarter, there needs to be more than this. $25,000? A drop in the bucket compared to what they'll make on future projects from everyone who luuuurves them.

Get with it folks. They can still pull the funding. It's all credit cards and frankly I'd have more respect for them if they fought it out with the loser who is writing this piece of garbage than trying to placate everyone with this nonsense. Wake up.

Your comment that seduction guide encourage "misogynistic" behavior is also incredibly offensive and sexist. How about you treat things equally between the sexes rather than immediately use terminology and words that place men in the immediate spot of wrongdoing? Kickstart, you're disgusting and I'm done with you.